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A CRITICAL INVESTIGATION INTO DISCOURSESTHAT CONSTRUCT ACADEMIC LITERACYAT THE DURBAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYA thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree ofDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYofRHODES UNIVERSITY
bySioux M
c
KennaApril 2004
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Abstract
This thesis examines the construction of academic literacy at the DurbanInstitute of Technology through a discourse analysis of interviews witheducators and learners. Academic literacy comprises the norms and valuesof higher education as manifested in discipline-specific practices. Studentsare expected to take on these practices, and the underlying epistemologies,without any overt instruction in, or critique of, these ways of being.Lecturer and student discourses are identified and discussed in terms of theirimpact on the teaching and learning process. This broad context of educatorand student understandings is set against the backdrop of the changingeducational policies and structures in post-Apartheid South Africa. Thechanges in approach to academic development are also traced as a settingfor the institutional study.The discourses about the intersection between language and learning werefound largely to assume that texts, be they lectures, books, assignments etc,are neutral and autonomous of their contexts. Difficulties some learnersexperience in accessing or producing the expected meaning of these textswere largely ascribed to their problems with language at a surface level ratherthan to their lack of shared norms regarding the construction of these texts.The study provides an analysis of how the ‘autonomous’ model is manifested
iiiand illustrates the limitations on curriculum change imposed by thisunderstanding of how texts are constructed and interpreted.Discourses of motivation presume that students’ difficulties in taking on theliteracy practices esteemed by the academy are related to attitude. Thisdiscourse assumes that learners have a fairly fixed identity, an assumptionthat did not bear out in the data. The multiple identities of the learners oftenpresented tensions in the acquisition of discipline-specific academic literacies.The learners were found not to invest strongly in an academically literateidentity, or were found to experience conflict between this target identity andthe identities they brought with them to the institution.The elevation of academic literacy practices is questioned if the surfacefeatures, characteristic of these practices, are valued without a concomitantclaim to knowledge production. The rapid emergence of a high skillsdiscourse in Universities of Technology in South Africa is also interrogated,given the current emphasis on training for economic growth over discoursesof social redress and transformation.
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3.3.1 Academic Literacy as a Set of Skills for McKenna Phd
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could you plz help me with this question?
analyse the implication of racism, social, cultural and linguistic problems as related to the work of community interpreters and devise strategies to deal with them